Monday, January 31, 2011

Fringe star Jasika Nicole has revealed details about an upcoming storyline on the show.

The actress told the New York Post that viewers will soon see characters from the alternate world cross over into the regular universe.

"You're going to start seeing [them] in our universe for the first time," she explained. "We've seen it the other way, but it's going to start happening [that] way around pretty soon. It's limitless. I'm assuming if there are two worlds, [then] there are an unlimited number of worlds."

She also speculated that the sci-fi drama may begin to explore time travel in more detail, following the recent revelation that the Observer (Michael Cerveris) is able to cross the time stream.

"What would it mean for someone to come back from the past who had passed away?" she asked. "It makes me think that [issue] might be coming up in future shows, but I don't know for sure."

FRINGE (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) – “6 Months Later”
In a follow up to last season’s “Peter” flashback episode, the all-new “Six Months Later” episode revisits a poignant period of time for both the Bishops and Olivia.

The Fringe team arrive at a government facility where Massive Dynamic has assembled Walternate's machine. While the device has no obvious power source, Peter's presence causes it to activate. The team returning to Massive Dynamic, where chief scientist Dr. James Falcon runs tests on Peter. Meanwhile, Broyles explains that computer experts have gained access to Fauxlivia's laptop, but that it contains one dense file with no obvious decryption code. He enlists Astrid's help to crack the code, but instructs her to remain discreet, since the file contains personal details about Fauxlivia's relationship with Peter.

Olivia and Broyles are called to a crime scene and find the corpse of a shapeshifter. They discover that the name of the man the shapeshifter was impersonating, Michael Baird, is in Fauxlivia's file. Broyles believes that there is a mole inside their department, tracking down the shapeshifters from the information in Fauxlivia's file and permanently silencing them.

A number of Massive Dynamic employees and FBI agents are made to undergo a high-tech lie-detector invented by William Bell. All suspects are proven innocent, but the team discovers that Dr. Falcon left work early. The FBI storm Falcon's home, but they are too late and the scientist - now revealed as a shapeshifter - has already been killed. When Falcon's body is taken to the lab, Walter finds blood under his fingernails, suggesting that the killer is human.

Narrowing the list of suspects who had access to Fauxlivia's file by blood type, the team come up with one suspect: Massive Dynamic scientist Brandon. However, Brandon takes the lie detector test and is also proven innocent. Meanwhile, a terrified shapeshifter is hunted through the streets and murdered by the real killer, Peter Bishop. Believing Peter to have returned to Massive Dynamic to undergo more tests, Walter is shocked when Nina calls him to enquire about his son's whereabouts. Walter begins to suspect that Peter is the killer and confirms his suspicions by entering his son's bedroom, finding a copy of Fauxlivia's file with the names of the murdered shapeshifters highlighted.

At Walter's lab, Olivia overcomes her unease and reads Fauxlivia's file. She manages to crack her doppelganger's code - a system based around their shared childhood nickname 'Olive' - and uncovers the name of the final target, Zack Alpert. Meanwhile, Peter hunts down and kills Apert, but is interrupted by Walter, who has also tracked the shapeshifter down. Peter explains that he has been killing the shapeshifters to retrieve their data disks, in an attempt to learn more about Walternate's machine, but Walter is shocked by his son's cold-blooded actions. Olivia and Broyles arrive at Alpert's home sometime later, but Walter and Peter have vanished, leaving the shapeshifter's corpse behind.

That night, Olivia is frustrated that the killer completed his mission and that their identity remains a mystery. As she departs the Bishop home, Walter shares a terrifying theory with his son. He believes that just as Peter activated the machine, so the machine has triggered something in him, turning him into a weapon.

Back at Massive Dynamic, Brandon explains to Nina that he has tracked down three copies of a book about the First People - the ancient race who originally constructed Walternate's device. While conducting his search, Brandon has learned that William Bell tried to track down the same books several years earlier. As the episode concludes, Peter stares darkly into his bedroom mirror, his face superimposed with an image of the mysterious machine that is now controlling him.

Fringe continues to stick to this universe as it explores Peter (Joshua Jackson) and his relationship to the machine. On Friday, January 28th, the FOX drama aired "Reciprocity," an episode that seemed to have two story lines until they inevitably crashed together.

What is the relationship between Peter and the doomsday machine?

As previewed, "Reciprocity" focused a great deal of the hour on Peter. In the first few minutes of Fringe, Peter walked into Massive Dynamic where scientists were working on piecing together the first people’s doomsday machine. Until that moment, the machine didn’t work. It wasn’t reacting to power sources and couldn’t transmit power.

But then the machine starts moving, drawing office objects closer--and Peter’s nose starts bleeding. So starts the tests on Peter to find out how he’s connected to the doomsday machine. Yet, Dr. James Falcon (Charles Parnell) can find no relation. Peter is in perfect health.

That doesn’t stop Walter (John Noble) from worrying about Peter. Also as previewed, Walter turns to Nina (Blair Brown) for help. She finds some serums that could rejuvenate his brain. Yet, Walter takes a serum intended for chimpanzee brains first. While it doesn’t help him much, it provides some much-need comic relief.

Who’s killing the shape shifters on Fringe?

While Peter is going through all sorts of tests, Olivia (Anna Torv) is called to duty. Someone is killing shape shifters, all of whom are in Faux-Livia’s computer, which Astrid (Jasika Nicole) has been working on. The killer is also removing the data storage disks.

The team agrees: Walter-net seems to be cleaning up loose ends. After all, they assume the shape-shifters know something about his plans with the doomsday machine.

As they sort through a long list of names, they realize that whoever is killing the shape shifters has been in Faux-Livia’s computer. That means they have a mole. Yet, a search at Massive Dynamic and the FBI leads to nothing but a false lead.

Then a woman is chased down an alley. She shape-shifts, and the killer appears. Here is where the two story lines collide. The killer is none other than Peter.

The first person to realize this is Walter. After a distressing call from Nina, he goes into Peter’s room and realizes Peter discovered a letter substitution code among the files. Wanting to protect his son, yet again, he finds Peter in the home of a shape-shifter, a shape-shifter who has been expecting Peter. The two are rolling around on the floor when Walter walks in.

Peter wins, but he’s clearly not himself as Walter looks on. “They’re soldiers, Walter,” Peter says to explain his actions. “They’re here to kill us.” Peter also says he’s tired of being reactive and he’s been looking for information. He’s found none on the disks, but he thinks he’s done no wrong. As Walter points out, if he’s doing nothing wrong, then why didn’t he tell the team?

Even after the confrontation between Fringe son and father, Peter doesn’t tell Olivia. She’s left stunned that they were always one step behind, but she doesn’t connect the dots. Things are definitely more distant between Olivia and Peter than ever before.

So, how is the machine related to Peter’s killing spree? Walter has his own theory, one that explains the episode title Reciprocity. “Every relationship is reciprocal,” Walter explained. The machine changed Peter and weaponized him.

The future of Fringe

That relationship between man and machine is obviously not over. As the season continues to unfold, more will be revealed about Peter’s role on Fringe. To do this, viewers should expect more flashbacks to Peter’s childhood on the other side, as the show explores why Peter is so special.

Other spoilers were hinted at toward the end of the episode. Massive Dynamic has now collected three more ‘First People’ books. They’re in three different languages but basically say the same thing. The important part of this book search though? William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) did the same exact search just a few years prior. With that reintroduction and reference to Bell, viewers can now look for him to appear in future season three episodes.

According to dictionary.com, the definition of reciprocity is a reciprocal state or relation, a mutual exchange. When you give something to someone, be it tangible or not, they give it back and vice versa.

As Walter said in last night’s episode of Fringe, every relationship is reciprocal. Between man and woman, man and child, person and pet… Every relationship is about the give and take. In last night’s episode it was about man and Walternet’s machine.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s take it back and recap tonight’s episode from the beginning…
The episode begins as the fringe division crew is on the scene with Nina Sharp at Massive Dynamic’s off site hanger where the doomsday machine is being assembled and tested. Whereas Olivia mentions it’s bigger than she imagined, Peter supposes, “it’s just big enough to destroy a couple of universes.” No one at Massive Dynamic seems to know anything about the workings of the machine but as Peter is in the house, things start happening. Specifically, the electromagnetism in the room spikes, the computers start going crazy and Peter gets a nosebleed. (Oh hey! Am I watching Lost?!)

It’s also at this scene we learn that the division has cracked the code on Fauxlivia’s computer which while good news isn’t helping the fringe division much. (Editor’s note: As this is what Walter has dubbed her, I’ll start calling her Fauxlivia but I much prefer Bolivia.)

Every observation she made and thought she had is in one big file and it’s hard for them to tell what’s valuable. There’s detailed information about her relationship with Peter and hundreds of names of those she came in contact with but no real order or code to figure out what it all means.

Shortly after the hangar, there is a moment between Peter and Walter in the kitchen of their house. Walter having read “The First People” multiple times to determine what the machine is and it’s connection to Peter, and Peter just coming in the house after a supposed late night walk. Peter is exhausted, anxious and somewhat determined. He needs and wants answers just as much as everyone else does. He tells Walter that he can’t protect him from this, and by the look in Walter’s eyes you can tell this is killing him. (In case you forgot, “The First People” by Seamus Wilis is the book mentioned some episodes back about a civilization before the dinosaurs who made a great technological discovery.)

To no avail, Peter undergoes some medical tests at Massive Dynamic to investigate the connection between him and the machine. Not surprisingly the tests tell us nothing. Terrified, Walter speaks to Nina about his need for the research Billy did when taking out parts of his brain. He feels he isn’t whole and needs to be smarter to help Peter and he breaks my heart.

Meanwhile Broyles puts Astrid on the case to figure out Fauxlivia’s file, and a dead shapeshifter is found at the port authority. As Olivia is super smart, she figures out that this could be the work of Walternet and there is a mole over here.

At first, it appears to be Dr. Falcon, who was just conducting tests on Peter. Yet, moments later we see Dr. Falcon dead on the floor of his living room, leaking mercury from his brain and his data storage unit removed. Finding blood under Dr. Falcon’s nails, they link the murders to Brandon Fayette (Massive Dynamic’s chief scientist) who is later cleared by Billy’s amazing lie detector machine.

In a twist I didn’t see coming, we see Peter shoot down another shapeshifter and steal the data storage unit from it’s back. Peter has been killing each shapeshifter and sifting through their data. His need for answers and his frustration in getting them has caused him to act out.

After a phone call from Nina, Walter realizes what is going on and tries to stop Peter before he gets to the last shapeshifter. By pure luck or accident, he actually ends up saving him as this time the shapeshifter was ready for Peter to attack. Walter watches, somewhat horrified, as Peter kills the shapeshifter.
“I don’t know what happened. This isn’t you,” says Walter.

Peter doesn’t think he is doing anything wrong, “they’re not even human,” he says. Walter questions back wondering if he isn’t doing anything wrong, they why didn’t he tell anyone?
There’s a definite change in Peter. He says he’s “tired of being reactive.” It’s time to figure this out, he’s sick of waiting to find out what his part in the destruction of the world is. He wants answers and he wants them now and he’ll do whatever it takes to get them.

And this is where the reciprocity comes in. In Walter’s mind, Peter’s relationship with the machine must be reciprocal for him to act out like this. It's possible that upon touching the device, he he’s become weaponized.

Now, Is this true or is Peter acting out because he's really pissed off about being in the dark? We’re not entirely sure. What’s the next step to take? Neither Walter nor Peter know. The only thing we know for sure is that Peter is tired of waiting around to see what this connection is. It’s time for some answers.
Some additional observations:

Peter and Olivia's relationship took a few steps forward tonight. You could see she felt the same way as Fauxlivia did as she was reading her file.

Will Olivia ever find out it was Peter killing the shapeshifters?

Walter sniffing the chimp serum and then eating a banana split was hilarious and also endearing as he feels he needs to be smarter no matter the consequences.

Fox won Friday night with adults 18-49 and 18-34. In its second Friday, Fringeonce again averaged a 1.9 rating with adults 18-49 even though its lead in, Kitchen Nightmares was down two tenths from last week to a 1.7 rating with adults 18-49.

Next Friday on "Fringe", a shocking crime will uncover a terror attack and the only one who can stop it is a man who can see into a mind. Titled "Concentrate and Ask Again", the upcoming episode of the J.J. Abrams-directed sci-fi TV drama will air February 4.

When a scientist falls dead after ingesting a lethal cloud of blue powder and his bones disintegrate in his body, the CDC suspects a biological attack. As the Fringe Team investigates further, a subject from Walter's past with ties to Olivia reluctantly agrees to assist with the intense case.

More about what lies ahead for the TV series, Jasika Nicole who plays Astrid Farnsworth once revealed to TV Guide, "It's no longer about needing to communicate with them and say, 'Look, we don't want to be at war, we just want peace'."

"It doesn't really matter because the worlds are starting to come apart at the seams in a fundamental way. The trajectory of the show is figuring out how to stop that from happening, so that our universe doesn't become like theirs, because theirs is practically destroyed."

This week’s Fringe, an episode titled “Reciprocity,” was about breaking codes and breaking down defenses. It began on a rather light note, when it was revealed that our heroes had cracked the encryption code on the alternate-world-Olivia’s case files. (In deference to Walter, who this week started using the widely-employed fan term “Fauxlivia,” that’s what I’ll call her here.) What was the key to the code? All Walter would say, with a slight shudder, was, “Fauxlivia ruined U2 for all of us.” (Bono ruined U2 for me quite a while ago, Walter.)

I was glad to see much of the hour was set in Massive Dynamic, where the nearly-assembled doomsday machine and Nina Sharp co-habit. Upon the entrance of Peter, Olivia, Walter, and Broyles, the lab surrounding the machine began to shake from a spike in electro-magnetic activity. Peter, whose nose bled at the same time, recognized that he was the thing that had set off this reaction. We also met bio-medical engineer Dr. James Falcon, who I’m sure you pegged as someone to keep a close eye on right away simply because he was too male-model perfect not to be either a new very good guy or a very bad guy. Turned out he was the latter, a shape-shifter who’d be killed a bit later. Oh, and we were blithely informed that William Bell had invented a super-duper lie detector machine far superior to the kind ordinary law enforcement uses. Really, Nina keeps a lot of stuff to herself, doesn’t she?

Walter told Nina about his mission to make himself smarter, to equal the intelligence of Walternate and restore his missing brain matter. Nina was very suspicious throughout. She balked, as she so often has in the past, about letting anyone see William Bell’s research materials. When Walter requested Bell’s notes, she said they were 15 years old and so difficult to locate. Nina has pulled this 15-years-was-an-eon-ago eye-rolling bit before. A bit later, she suddenly revealed that she’d not only found Bell’s notes, but also had vials of a “retro-viral serum” that would re-grow Walter’s brain cells. Problem was, it had been tested on rats and chimps, and Walter, in his blithe haste, inhaled the chimp stuff, which led to some monkeyshines back at the lab, suddenly craving a banana split and baring his teeth at Astrid to “display dominance.”
The humor was short-lived.

For those still watching “Fringe”, the start of Season 3 was a thrilling, back-and-forth tale of two Olivias. There was Our Olivia, and Over There Olivia, who many on the interwebs (including myself) called Fauxlivia. (Apparently, the writer’s room had similar thoughts, as we learned tonight.) Both iterations of Olivia focused their gaze on the single, solitary Peter Bishop, the man at the center of the fates of each universe. If there was a criticism that could be leveled at the resolution of that mini-arc in the Fall, it was that con man Peter Bishop should have sensed that he himself was being conned. Tonight’s episode, “Reciprocity,” showed that no one was angrier about Peter being fooled than Peter himself.
Recognizing, or rather anticipating, audience frustration need not always be part of future plotting of any show. But it’s often very cool to be shouting at the television and then seemingly hear an answer back. Television viewing isn’t bidirectional, of course, but it’s nevertheless comforting when certain shows deploy apparent potholes only to reveal they were laying groundwork for later stories. Peter’s lack of awareness could have simply been played as a convenient way for Fauxlivia to carry out her mission and wreak emotional havoc between Olivia and Peter upon their eventual reunion. Doing so would have moved the plot along, though doing so while sacrificing Peter’s character. But “Fringe” took that deception, combined with Peter’s relative new and unfortunately naïve trust, and is using it to set up something akin to Greek tragedy as the season progresses.
So much of the Over Here/Over There business delights due to its use of binaries. Pretty much everything has a twisted mirror image on the other side. That “twist” can be subtle, to be sure, but there all the same. However, Peter has no mirror image, no fractured reflection, no ability to gaze up at the stars like some intergalactic Fievel and know that somewhere out there someone’s looking up at the same stars as him. He’s of both worlds and yet belongs to neither, which could help explain why The Doomsday Device responds to him and him alone. In a war in which mutual destruction is essentially assured, he’s perhaps the one link that can stave off annihilation.
I spent the better part of the last six years of my life trying to decipher another sci-fi puzzler (“Lost”) only to watch a series finale in which most of that effort was proven to have been missing the point altogether. So I’m loathe to put a terrific amount of time and energy into trying to piece together shapeshifters, Observers, ancient societies, and obscure technology into a cohesive thesis at this point. (Just looking at that last sentence makes my brain hurt.) Sure, seeing another show featuring electromagnetic energy and nosebleeds has me anxious to re-read essays on Minkowski space-time equations, but then I have to tell myself that I should breathe, step away from Wikipedia, and stop the insanity. That way lies madness. And smoke monsters.
But looking at Peter’s place as a metaphorical and yet potentially LITERAL go-between betwixt these two universes DOES interest me, since it gets at a place that’s emotional as opposed to pseudo-scientific. Peter spent the majority of his adult life as a con artist, pretending to be something other than he was for personal profit. That all makes sense, especially when given the fact that deep down, he probably understood that he didn’t truly know who he was at all. So creating different aliases was no different than, say, shapeshifting. (See what I did there?)
What we’ve seen over the course of the show is him gradually accepting not only his father, but Olivia and Astrid as well and forming a type of family structure that he long forbade himself from having, or simply didn’t deem himself worthy of having. To have that trust violated so grossly by Fauxlivia essentially hit the reboot button on his personality, sending him back to the shady state in which Olivia found him in the pilot episode.
This explanation makes more sense, and is quite frankly much more palatable of an option, that Walter’s theory that the doomsday device somehow “weaponized” Peter and sent him on a shapeshifter killing spree. Peter Bishop as a combination of Gollum and Jason Bourne just doesn’t cut it for me. But a man dealing with a father and a lover, both essentially imposters, might go a little insane in the membrane, thus forcing him along a path in which he can trust no one but himself in order to get at the bottom of his true identity. (So, “The Bishop Identity,” as it were. But with enough mercury to send Jeremy Piven back to the hospital.) I’m fairly certain that we’re not supposed to take Walter’s hypothesis seriously, but what’s important is that WALTER takes it seriously. And this leads us back to Walter Bishops’s Brain Games.
Much of the early “Fringe” mythology was dropped not unlike it was hot once the idea of multiple universes was introduced in full force. This Snoop Dogg approach served the show well, as things like ZFT manuscripts gave way to “The First People”. But the mystery of Walter’s missing brain tissue has stayed intact, and functioned as a way to lend the show an air of tragic inevitability. Walter’s curiosity literally opened the door to the inter-universal war in which these characters find themselves, and we the audience know what Walter does not: that those missing pieces of his brain contain not only knowledge but 99% of Walter’s sizeable ego. Poor Walter seeks those parts of his brain that might save his son, but the act of trying to find Bell’s retroviral serum may be just the element that pushes Peter to the brink of death. For all the worry of Walternate employing moles, the true enemy was where it usually is: within each of us.

A few more notes about tonight’s episode….

*** Joshua Jackson killed in this hour. So often this season Anna Torv and John Noble have been given the chance to shine while Jackson did solid but less flashy work. But he sold the frustration, the anger, the menace, and sheer exhaustion that Peter feels at this point. Also? He also sold Peter’s mad cleaver skillz.

*** Fauxlivia’s journal needs to be published, preferably as a YA novel. The whole “PB” thing didn’t sound very adult to me. (And no, I won’t make any cracks about “PB” loving PB&J sandwiches.) If vampires can have diaries, so can smoking hot Fringe agents from Earth-2.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Wait a second. Did you say Marlene (Phyllis Somerville) was going to be on Fringe?
Yup. The Big C alum plays a character named Alice Merchant in the episode airing Feb. 18, titled “6B.” No details on who the character is, but you should probably more interested in what the episode title is referencing.

The fate of Peter (Joshua Jackson) on Fringe "Reciprocity" is a questionable one. For months, the sci-fi drama has hinted about Peter’s destiny, that his very existence will have an impact on this world as well as on the other side.

Through the doomsday machine created by the first people, he might just destroy their world... or create a whole new universe.

On Friday, January 28th, the Observer’s desired and predicted future for Peter starts to come to fruition in "Reciprocity."

Peter comes into contact with the doomsday device while in Massive Dynamic headquarters; in turn, he becomes their lab rat.

As Walter (John Noble) did last week on Fringe "Firefly," he worries for Peter’s safety. So much so that he turns to Nina (Blair Brown) to help with acquiring more brain power in Fringe "Reciprocity."

Walter is still intent on rediscovering the parts of his brain that were taken away from him.

While most viewers will be tuning in to see what happens between Peter and the doomsday device, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has stopped turning.

Olivia (Anna Torv) and the team are also investigating the discovery of a dead body.

In last week’s Fringe "Firefly," the drama’s ratings actually improved despite the move to Friday nights. Four-point-nine million viewers tuned in for the live show.

On January 28th, the drama continues to explore the fallout of Olivia, having been trapped on the other side.

Keep the ratings up by tuning in on Friday, January 28 for Fringe "Reciprocity."

FRINGE fans, are you counting down the hours until the next episode like we are?

It’s no secret that Give Me My Remote is quite fond of the show, so we’re here to make the wait a little less painful. Check out an exclusive image from Friday’s brand new hour, “Reciprocity”!

As you can see in the picture below, Peter gets tested at Massive Dynamic to try and get a better understanding of the relationship he has with the Doomsday device. And by the angry look on Walter’s face, it appears he isn’t too thrilled with the situation…